To ask for advice - legal / driving DH being taken to claims court

[Grainyawaydays]

Around two years ago DH had notification from his car insurance that someone 300 miles away was making a claim against him. He was 100% home all day that day and we weren’t notified of the claim until about three months after it had gone in and he’d actually had a new car by this point. He trades them fairly regularly due to his line of work.
insurance said they would fight it and eventually it was closed about 18 months after the alleged accident.
He has received a letter today from the small claims court and the other driver is alleging he caused £12k worth of damage to her car and she didn’t get his details because he fled the scene. She is now taking him to court personally for £14k (£12k plus costs incurred).
Hes on about his fourth car since this happened and we have no way of proving that this wasn’t him. But equally she can’t prove it was - because it wasn’t! The police don’t seem to have been informed and I do think if someone caused £12k of damage to my car and drove off I’d have informed them at the time.
we can only assume she has recorded the reg incorrectly - since she’s saying it was a fairly major crash but the other driver left the scene? So it’s possible she hasn’t recorded the correct reg in the moment. Or it was a cloned plate.
Any advice? It looks like DH is going to have to go to court - 300 miles away - and get a solicitor.

Can bank statements show dh was spending money somewhere? Was he at work? Cctv in the street? Ring doorbell footage?

Has he not got a witness to say he was at home? Has he even ever been in that area?

£10k is the threshold for small claims court. I'm a PI lawyer and would hand this over to your insurers to deal with.

Can he prove he was not in the vicinity the accident occurred in?

Ive checked my diary and I was at home that afternoon when it allegedly happened… but I’m not an unbiased witness. He was basically working at home all the time then as we weren’t far out of the pandemic.
No, he’s never been to the location of the alleged accident.
The issue with it being two years ago is we don’t have anything from that date that I can think of that would ‘prove’ it. He had online meetings that day so he could possibly go back and ask people there if they’d vouch for him but I doubt anyone would actually remember 100% that day if they saw him.

So to be clear, the only details she got were the reg number and presumably colour of the car?
What did your insurance co conclude first time round - do they have documents they can share?

The onus is on her to prove he did it.

He’s gone back to the insurers and they’ve asked for copies of the paper work.
Maybe it’s not small claims - maybe it’s just a personal claim and I described it incorrectly. It’s definitely for £14k

Could his work IT look to see if they have records of the online meeting stored anywhere?

She’s never confirmed colour of car. Our insurers never had any response from her or her solicitor. Because we went back and asked for a description of the car / driver and we’ve never had anything. We do have emails from the insurance company saying she never responded to any requests for further information regarding the accident.

If he was on MS Teams calls you can get attendance reports. That may help.

So she's just written down a combination of letters and numbers and suing whoever that happens to reach.... doesn't sound great for her but annoying that you have to spend your time worrying about it.

It sounds really suss. If it was an actual crash then the police should've been notified. The fact she hasn't engaged suggests she damaged the car and has happened to find a "perpetrator" but surely with zero evidence etc she'll lose money taking it to court? IANAL though...

Will check Teams - thanks.
Yes, she seems to have written it down and is now just going with it. She must be certain to not be letting it go though? I can’t understand why she didn’t report it to the police.

Does he have the same mobile phone?
Is his timeline on it activated, if so does it go back that far?

He has a different mobile but the same number?
I think we need to probably see if work will give any data.

contact the insurance that you were with at the time
how about mobile phone record data??

Pass to insurance and request information from work on his log in.

We are still we with the same insurer.
Ive just asked DH and he says there’s not a time of accident so we don’t actually no when she alleging this to have happened.

Apparently it isn’t very expensive to take someone to court and her possible gain is £14k… wondering if it is a scam after all.

I can't see why they won't help out.
A friend sold a car but kept getting speeding tickets /parking fines through and her work boss sent information to the police to say that she lived no where near the alleged offences and he could prove from work sheets that she was at work on all days/times.

what are the "costs of 12k incurred"???

I have a different phone than I did 3 years ago but my Google maps timeline goes back that far and shows me where I was, might be worth looking at?

If he was working from home would I.T hold anything information to the IP address he was using or VPN? I'm no computer wizard but maybe his employers have something that can prove he was using your internet at home?

How did she get your address? Surely insurance companies don’t give this out. It’s very much on her to prove that it was your DHs car and that he was driving that day; I can’t see how she could have any proof in this situation. I also think that she has to provide all the evidence to you beforehand so you’ll know what (if any) she has and the details from your insurance company go in your favour. Wait to see what evidence she has before doing anything.

The £12k was damage to her car, with an extra £2k for "costs incurred" - maybe legal advice, cost of retrieving and storing car, hire car?

I think it costs a lot of money to go to court, especially because if you lose you have to pay the other persons fees. 12k is a huge amount of damage, all seems very strange.

Not sure how she got our address actually - through the DLVA? I don’t know.
DH is asking work if they can review where he was in terms of data and where he joined the meetings from. He’s worried she could just say he’d joined them there.